Tesla responded to DefCon Model S hacks with job offers

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When you are the manufacturer of the most connected car in existence, you’d be foolish not to invite the seedy underbelly of the tech world to take a swing at your creation. After all, it’s way better to see hackers manipulate your creation in the middle of a convention floor than out on the street. As long as you take corrective measures immediately, everything will be fine (hopefully). As it turns out, Tesla did more than just take corrective measures — the company has started sending job offers to the people who found vulnerabilities in its vehicles and is now keeping a public tally of the exploits that have been discovered so far.

It may seem like the obvious thing to do when someone demonstrates a huge flaw in your systems, but that job offer isn’t always what happens in these situations. Tesla Motors has always had a great combination of transparency efforts and technology friendly mindsets as they build these amazing machines, and that’t the best kind of combination for a forward-thinking company. We’ve already seen the APIs for Tesla’s vehicles used to create apps for smartwatches and Google Glass, and you can’t have an open platform like this in something as important as a vehicle without a serious focus on security behind the scenes.

Tesla’s decision to hire hackers to break its cars until they can’t be broken any more is absolutely what needed to happen next, and while the company has not yet announced any hires in this area it’s clear there’s an effort to make sure these kinds of exploits don’t affect their customers.

On top of the recruitment efforts at DefCon, Tesla is looking for anyone who can find security vulnerabilities in its vehicles. The rewards range from internship positions to “challenge coins” that offer free factory tours of the Tesla facility in California. Every time a vulnerability is discovered, Tesla puts it up on its website under the Security Researcher Hall of Fame for the world to see. This not only acknowledges the people who did the work, but clearly points out the progress made in securing one of the smartest cars in the world.